Can you briefly describe your APME Online Journalism Credibility Project?Content archived by newspapers is more easily accessible to more people than ever before through searchengines, and lives virtually forever. This has led to increasing requests from those named in articles toremove content from Web sites – to "unpublish.” This project examined how North American newsorganizations are handling and responding to requests to have content unpublished.

Why did you choose this issue?As public editor of Canada’s largest-circulation newspaper, rarely a month goes by that I am not facedwith requests from readers toremove content from the Star’s Web site. I was interested in how newsorganizations respond to such requests in a manner consistent with journalistic principles of accuracy,accountability, fairness and transparency.

How did you approach the issue?More than 100 North American news organizations responded to my survey on this issue through APMEUpdate and SurveyMonkey. I also queried ombudsmen and public editors through the Organization ofNewspaper Ombudsmen and interviewed media lawyers. I visited three news organizations in the U.S.Midwest to talk with news executives about how they handle this matter.

What did you and your news organization learn?I learned that there is an overall strong reluctance to remove published content from news Web sites.Although about half of the industry leaders surveyed have evolved policies and practices for handlingunpublishing requests, no overall industry best practices have yet emerged. As a result of this project,I wrote a "white paper" on the topic, including a policy for The Star and a list of questions that newsroomsor editors might ask themselves when making decisions.